Lung Health Research Centre

Research Overview

The vision of the Centre is to improve lung health through excellence in basic and translational research. The core of the Centre will be the existing strong partnership between lung researchers in the Department of Pharmacology (Faculty of Medicine, Dentistry and Allied Health Sciences, FMDHS), where the Centre would be based, and leading clinical research groups at the Departments of Respiratory Medicine and Clinical Immunology at Royal Melbourne Hospital. As well as fostering research of the highest scientific standard and closest alignment to patient needs, the establishment of the Centre would confer great advantages in future funding bids for large scale support, such as a NHMRC Clinical Centres of Research Excellence (CRE) and Cooperative Research Centres (CRC). This would be achieved by providing structural alignment of current research capacities with both NHMRC and University translational medicine strategic objectives, and cross-disciplinary translational research with non-clinical departments and institutions. Furthermore, the Centre would contribute to advancing lung disease research by catalysing research training, offering an expanded teaching curriculum and providing an intellectual centre of gravity to attract and retain the best researchers. This will facilitate further academic collaborative research and create an internationally competitive Centre for basic science-to-patient-to-policy translational research.